Facebook usage statistics by population - Iceland now has highest Facebook penetration

Comscore have reported on Facebook's European dominance and a wide range of publishers have commented on Facebook's latest user numbers - including the Jakarta Post in Indonesia with an article that feature some of my comments (here).

However, Comscore only looked at 17 countries in Europe. I thought it would be interesting to look at Facebook penetration by country for all 98 countries across the world that Facebook publish user data for. I last looked at Facebook usage by proportion of population in July 2008, but things have changed a lot since then - here are the latest Facebook user statistics by proportion of population:

Top 30 countries with highest number of Facebook users per head of population:

Rank

Country

Latest Population figure

No. of Facebook Users

% Facebook penetration

1

Iceland

320,500

150,280

46.89%

2

Norway

4,813,000

1,937,320

40.25%

3

Denmark

5,511,451

2,109,900

38.28%

4

Canada

33,618,000

11,556,180

34.37%

5

UK

61,612,300

17,540,660

28.47%

6

Chile

16,895,000

4,480,480

26.52%

7

Hong Kong

7,008,900

1,755,580

25.05%

8

Australia

21,730,255

5,409,900

24.9%

9

Sweden

9,264,000

2,139,720

23.1%

10

Singapore

4,839,400

1,096,680

22.66%

11

Luxembourg

491,700

100,880

20.52%

12

Belgium

10,741,000

2,190,380

20.39%

13

Finland

5,332,029

1,051,400

19.72%

14

USA

306,227,000

59,977,740

19.55%

15

Switzerland

7,705,800

1,407,780

18.27%

16

Cyprus

801,600

143,380

17.89%

17

New Zealand

4,304,509

768,100

17.84%

18

Malta

412,600

71,320

17.29%

19

The Bahamas

342,000

56,280

16.46%

20

Puerto Rico

3,982,000

651,580

16.36%

21

Italy

60,090,400

8,882,260

14.78%

22

Israel

7,390,600

1,091,520

14.77%

23

France

65,073,482

9,579,240

14.72%

24

Turkey

71,517,100

10,477,320

14.65%

25

Croatia

4,432,000

639,300

14.42%

26

Slovenia

2,053,355

294,500

14.34%

28

Ireland

4,517,800

639,020

14.14%

29

Maldives

309,000

42,260

13.68%

30

Trinidad & Tobago

1,339,000

182,480

13.63%

The 30 countries with the lowest number of Facebook users per head of population:

Rank

Country

Latest Population figure

No. of Facebook Users

% Facebook penetration

66

Morocco

31,394,044

519,820

1.66%

67

Hungary

10,029,900

163,560

1.63%

68

Peru

29,165,000

463,520

1.59%

69

Ecuador

13,938,115

214,980

1.54%

70

El Salvador

6,163,000

92,900

1.51%

71

Indonesia

229,950,000

3,114,080

1.35%

72

Philippines

92,226,600

1,233,620

1.34%

73

Oman

2,845,000

37,800

1.33%

74

Sri Lanka

20,238,000

223,960

1.11%

75

Honduras

7,466,000

73,000

0.98%

76

Taiwan

23,027,672

222,540

0.97%

77

Guatemala

14,027,000

133,520

0.95%

78

Poland

38,130,300

322,600

0.85%

79

Nicaragua

5,743,000

44,540

0.78%

80

Kenya

39,802,000

239,100

0.60%

81

Paraguay

6,349,000

35,760

0.56%

82

Romania

21,496,700

114,980

0.53%

83

Thailand

63,389,730

300,860

0.47%

84

Ghana

23,837,000

104,200

0.44%

85

South Korea

48,333,000

163,620

0.34%

86

Pakistan

166,120,500

559,680

0.34%

87

Japan

127,630,000

323,340

0.25%

88

Nigeria

154,729,000

350,540

0.23%

89

Brazil

191,045,000

413,800

0.22%

90

Bangladesh

162,221,000

294,360

0.18%

91

India

1,162,000,000

1,676,520

0.14%

92

Ukraine

46,143,700

66,240

0.14%

93

Russia

141,850,000

203,440

0.14%

94

Vietnam

88,069,000

73,280

0.08%

95

China

1,328,718,000

394,800

0.03%

Notes* Lowest Facebook user list excludes Iraq, Estonia and Latvia - all shown by Facebook to have 'less than 20 users'- All figures for number of Facebook users taken from Facebook's interface- Population figures sourced from Wikipedia here (with the exception of Hong Kong which is sourced from here)

I think it's most interesting to look at where Facebook hasn't taken off. There are a number of stories in the bottom 30 countries by Facebook use against proportion of population. Clearly, in some cases there are massive populations with limited internet access, but in others Facebook has not been able to topple a local / established player.

In Eastern Europe local market players like Nasza Klasa and V Kontahkte dominate. In Holland Facebook has around 10% of the users that Hyves has, in South Korea CyWorld is still the market leader and in Brazil, the most socially active (online) country in the world, Facebook has a tiny market share compared to the dominance of Orkut.

Nielsen - most popular SNS in countries where Facebook isn't the leader

Clearly Facebook dominates internet use of a number of countries whilst others have significant growth potential. Also worth remembering that whilst 200m is a huge number, in aggregate it still only covers around 3.5% of the 5,741,544,589 total population represented by the 98 countries that Facebook reports statistics for!

Therefore lots of room for further Facebook growth and looking at the speed with which Facebook use is growing in Asia (particularly Malaysia and Indonesia) could this region become even more important for Facebook than the US and Europe?

17 comments:

When these figures were done Macedonia was at position 42 with 164,240 Facebook users, which according to Wikipedia represents 8.02% of population. Macedonia is therefore neither in the top 30 or bottom 30 by usage.

Great data, could you instruct me how to find the number of Facebook users for a particular country? I am especially curious about the number of facebook users in Tanzania. Thanks for any help or instruction!

Does the Facebook advertising interface really tell that it has "less than 20 users" in Estonia? Because there must be at least hundreds, my somewhat educated guess would be possibly a few thousand, even I myself do have more than 70 FB friends from Estonia.

It would be interesting to know what the statistics will be by nationality rather than country penetration. There is a very low penetration for the Philippines, but many of my Filipino friends are actually scattered all over the globe.

there are more facebook users than the actual population in Ecuador,a country which by the way is a third world country and the majority of the population does not have internet access... you got wrong info my friend

yes i noticed when reading your article that the country ranked 27 is missing second if you can try to list all countries from 1 till 98 and do not just put the first 30 and last 30 since many persons need to know there countries and try to be more specific with faster responses and accurate numbers since for example lebanon ha a population of 3.5 million and 1 million active facebook users proved by data and statistics forming around 30% of the population and yet it is not mentioned although it is well known that facebook is so common in lebanon so try to update ur info waiting for ur scientific statistical reply